Question

As the marketing manager of a major franchise, your job will be to perform the daily tasks of a marketing manager.

Select one of the franchise companies below for which you would like to be Marketing Manager.

Edible Arrangements® - Edible fruit baskets – Creates fresh fruit arrangements and gourmet chocolate dipped fruit to order.

Cartridge World® - Cartridge Company - carries a complete line of both inkjet and toner printer cartridges. Offers both remanufactured and Original Brand (OEM) ink and toner cartridges for nearly all brands of printers, copiers, fax and postage machines.

Liberty Tax Service® - Taxes – provides tax service to both consumers and businesses.

Im going with Edible Arrangements-Edible Fruit Baskets

Assumptions

-Your plan is to aggressively go after the consumer and business market creating dual revenue streams. Your marketing strategy, research marketing mix and customer relationship marketing will be different for both groups.

In this scenario, you will be responsible for conducting the following tasks:

-Observing and analyzing market trends

-Examining competitors' products and services

-Investigating ways of improving existing products and services, and increasing profitability

-Identifying target markets and developing strategies to communicate with them

Assignment

There are two parts to this Assignment so be sure to complete both parts.

Part 1: The Consumer and Business Market

Write a brief paragraph that answers the following questions. (This should not be in Question/Answer format).

-Which company did you choose as your focus in this Marketing Management Assignment?

-Where are the company's headquarters located?

-What is the mission statement of the company you chose to study?

-The previous marketing manager developed an advertising campaign before the marketing strategy. How could this advertising campaign potentially create problems for the product?

Part 2: Marketing Strategy Planning

In preparation for your first presentation to the CEO of the organization, you will create a 3–5 page paper.

You will examine how the 3 C’s (customer targets, competitors, customer value proposition) and 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) of marketing strategy influence marketing decisions about how you can increase purchases to consumers and increase purchases for business-to-business.

Your goal is to complete the consumer and business-to-business marketing strategy planning document. Using the bolded words as subheadings for each response as seen in the PDF of this Assignment, answer the following:

1. SMART Goals

a. S.M.A.R.T. Goals are:

i. Specific as to what exactly you want to accomplish and why.

ii. Measurable: How will you measure the results, or know when you have achieved the desired result?

iii. Achievable: They should be goals that allow for some challenge without exceeding ability. They should have an action verb like create, or recommend, decide, demonstrate, reduce, increase, etc.

iv. Relevant: The goals need to be relevant to your overall business objectives and realistic in terms of your budget, the economic climate etc.

v. Time frame: Provide a time frame to achieve the goals.

vi. Example: Increase revenues by 10% over the next 2 quarters of 2015.

b. Using the SMART acronym, list several objectives you wish to accomplish.

3. The 3 C’s of marketing strategy:Customer Targets: Discuss the customer targets (target market), you should have at least two. Provide for the CEO a more specific description of which customers you (the marketing manager) want to persuade to buy the product or service. Competitors: For each customer target, identify a competitor (brand or company) that may be able to provide the customer target a like product that would appeal to them. Value Proposition: What do you see as the value proposition? What are reasons for customers to purchase your brand/product. Summarize into a single paragraph.

4. The 4 P’s of marketing strategy: Marketing Mix for the Consumer Market: Describe each of the 4 P’s as it applies to consumers that would purchase your product

a. Product

b. Price

c. Place

d. Promotion

5. Marketing Mix: Business-to-Business Market: Describe each of the 4 P's as it applies to business that would purchase your product.

a. Product

b. Price

c. Place

d. Promotion

6. Competitive Advantage: Using one (or more) of the competitive advantages below, describe the components of this advantage and why customers will perceive them as an advantage for your product or service over its competitors’.

1. Cost-based advantage

2. Price-based advantage

3. Quality-based advantage

4. Differentiation advantage

5. Perceived quality advantage

6. Brand-based advantage

7. Product Life Cycle: Discuss the company’s products in The Product Life Cycle (PLC). Why do you think they are in that stage? Do you think there is any possibility of changing the current stage of the Product Life Cycle? For instance, if current products are in the maturity stage, what can the company do to have products in the Introduction or Growth stage?

8. Increase Purchases: Consumers: Thinking of your consumer target market, how can you get current customers of the product or service to buy more?

9. Increase Purchases: Business-to-Business: Thinking of your business-to-business target market, how can you get current customers of the product or service to buy more?

Answer 1

Answer: Part 1

Edible Arrangements® - Edible fruit baskets – Creates fresh fruit arrangements and gourmet chocolate dipped fruit to order.

For the marketing management assignment I would like to choose the Edible Arrangement company. This company is having the product as edible fruit baskets. This uses to create fresh fruit arrangements which can be order by the customer for their need and it also provides the gourmet chocolate dipper fruit products for consumer usage. This is a US based franchisee organization in fresh fruit products and its headquarter is at Wallingford, Connecticut, United States. The mission statement of the company “We want to Wow you” Thus the company want to make our mood fresh with the consumption of edible fruit products and make people’s life energetic. Thus the mission they have stated as the Wow for consumers. The wow means making people feel very good and energetic. This can be carried out with the consumption of edible’s fruit products. The previous marketing manager developed an advertising campaign before the marketing strategy. This advertising campaign was based on the general marketing approach and expertise of the previous marketing manager. This marketing was carried out based on the need in that particular region. But recently I, as a marketing manager for the firm, have developed the marketing strategy for the organization. This marketing strategy is developed in a structured manner such that it will support the organization for long term development and growth. Thus previous advertisement campaign may create problems for the new marketing strategy, as both may not relevant with each other and the proposed strategy may have some conflicts with the previous advertisements. So the new marketing approach needs to balance out the previous advertisement’s intent, because consumer may be influenced in wrong direction due to the conflict in both marketing approaches. The new marketing strategy needs to review the old advertisement key intents and need to include in it so that they can avoid creating a large confusion among consumers in the market due to two different marketing approaches.